Laura Cumming
Whoever would have guessed that John Banville’s Faustian murderer, Freddie Montgomery (now calling himself Morrow) would appear in a third novel as a middle-aged suitor, hard of breath, prone to tears and lewd with wonder at his own tumescence? Well, he’s in Athena (Secker & Warburg).
A staggered old bull, he calls himself, foolishly slavering over a beautiful young girl. He has been lured into her house to authenticate a stolen cache of 17th-century Flemish paintings. The narrative is structured around the seven entries Morrow makes in his catalogue raisonnee.
Athena is melancholy and disturbing. As a work of intellectual imagination, it redeems both Morrow and Banville.
l Amos Oz is a writer of such revelatory genius that he can express the complexity of Israel’s history in the humblest of household effects. In his new novel, Don’t Call it Night (Chatto & Windus), Theo seems to embody the very character of a nation: he is a planner, working in a theoretical state. But this is the 1990s and the blueprint must change. Semi- retirement has finally brought him home. (”Home” is a place among immigrants from 30 different countries in a new desert town.)
Oz has a gift for conveying our lives as intimate strangers. Such is Oz’s great, wide achievement in this, his masterpiece.
l Anita Brookner’s Incidents in the Rue Laugier (Cape) has servants and menus and dressing for dinner — but it’s set in the 1970s. It’s about a couple who endure 30 years of melancholy together, politely passing teacups across a silent table.
Edward and Maud are always dreaming of another life, but Brookner will not let them choose it. If a sense of disastrous inevitability appeals to you, so will this.